‘Meteor Lake’ AI hardware has landed inside Lenovo’s iconic business laptops. We got a preview of these flagship machines ahead of Intel’s Core Ultra launch.
Lenovo just revealed the next generations of its ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 laptops, featuring new designs and Intel’s just-launched Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processors.
While updates to these perennial favorites are exciting in their own right—the 2023 X1 Carbon received a full five-star score from PCMag—the presence of Intel’s AI-ready Meteor Lake chips ups the ante.
We were able to spend some brief time with these systems prior to their announcement, bringing you a closer look at the designs and details below.Leveling Up the X1’s: New Carbon and 2-in-1 Machines
First up, we have the traditional clamshell ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12. This is a 14-inch laptop, making for an inherently portable machine that measures 0.58 by 12.3 by 8.4 inches (HWD) and 2.42 pounds. Diehard users will notice a difference in size from the Gen 11 model, and for everyone else, the Gen 12 is, in fact, notably smaller.
It doesn’t sound like much on paper—the Gen 11 version measures 0.6 by 12.4 by 8.8 inches—but seeing the two together emphasizes how much has been trimmed off an already small footprint. It’s impressive, considering the screen size remains the same. You’ll find a total internal redesign here, too, in part required by new internal component needs. (More on those below.)
Within that compact frame is an advanced panel, available up to a 2.8K-resolution (2,880-by-1,800-pixel) OLED touch display with a 120Hz refresh rate, which should appeal to nearly any type of worker. Otherwise, the professional-focused feature set is out here in force. A 1080p, 8-megapixel camera sits above the screen, joined by two speakers and two microphones, plus Dolby Atmos and Dolby Voice. Wi-Fi 7 is now on board for improved wireless internet speeds, as well as Bluetooth 5.2, SIM, and eSIM support.
As far as physical connectivity, the X1 Carbon Gen 12 includes two USB Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports (both with Thunderbolt 4 support), a headphone jack, and a SIM slot. It’s good to see both types of USB port survive on a laptop this slim, for a robust, practical offering for a wide range of users. The Gen 12 Carbon maxes out at Intel Core Ultra 7, 64GB of memory, and 2TB of SSD storage.
